Avali Nexus the 12th: Fluffified Zodiacs

// woo, Lucas is taller than most Avali

 

Don't tell that to alpha

 

// *all avali spontaneously grown by four feet*

// *screams in agony*

 

They see me rollin'

they hatin'

 

it's not hard, Surge is like, 6"2 and the Tecarians are minimum 6 feet

 

// meanwhile Noul is 7"7... Vartans are taaaaall motherfuckers.

 

well Tecarians go up to nearly 16" in height but that's only the Thanatos model, which most don't like to consider one of the infantry platforms, second tallest is the Vulcan at approximately 8"4

 

// vartans are very skinny though, and don't use heavy armor. the toughest stuff they have is a vest of studded leather with fine metal wire embroidered into it. surprisingly resistant, but not bulletproof.

 

*he simply nods and smiles to the first question*
So much so people have called me teddy bear and puppy.
*slowly gets up*
Uhhh, yeah actually I do have a training area, towards the back of the ship, the far wall of it happens to be the thickest bulkheads of the ship that separate the reactor and engines from the habitable part of the ship.

*whispers to Lex*

Oh and despite the rather large drone army I have, the vast majority of them are just constructor bots, the training range is one of the few areas that hosts drones with tactical ai, and even those use stun pistols in the skills course events.

 

yeah the Tecarians are obviously overboard in every way when it comes to armor, except for Gladiator airborne infantry droids but that's because they have to be lightweight enough to fly with their jetpacks, their armor won't stop much more than stray shrapnel.
Crusader's armor will stop most shrapnel and buckshot, in a combat situation this mostly means that being within the blast zone of a grenade is irrelevant to them.
Legionnaires mostly patch up the Crusader's weakpoints but their armor will also stop some low caliber weapons, so a lot of sidearms are rather ineffective against them.
Lancers are ridiculous, their thick plating will stop dead a projectile from anything short of a straight anti-material weapon, and their shields offer very thorough protection against energy weapons.
Vulcans are immune to all manner of small arms fire, which should be obvious given their thickset appearance, although just as armored as some tanks they are smaller and thus a much harder target for anti-armor weapons, making them a favorite for urban warfare
Thanatos droids are the exact opposite of the Vulcan at nearly double the height, tall, thin, and, using a scaled humanoid torso on a quadruped chassis, exceedingly capable of traversing even the most defiant terrain, while they don't boast a significant improvement in armor over the Vulcan despite the massive size increase, they do have shields and improved firepower to offset this.

 

Except you can't place a rocket in a normal gun and call it good.

 

you can't put any self-propelled projectile in a normal gun and call it good
the smallest rocket powered round I could possibly recommend is a 20mm maybe, and even then you need a specially designed weapon to launch it, a grenade launcher esque under-barrel attachment could work

 

What if they're tiny rockets

 

// what would their armor be made of? and how would it be set up? plates? interlocking plates? chain-mail?

 

Then it's a HERP.

 

Lex nods gently, before seeming aggitated for some reason, "She also wants to know if she may use it?" Before seemnig to relax as he pets him.

 

To explain the HERP: It comes with a special bullet casing that, when struck by the firing mechanism, activates the rocket. You also need a slight adjustment to the gun, to vent the extra gasses. But now you have a weapon that can be fired without atmosphere! In fact, it's recommended that you do not fire it within atmosphere, because the round will be coming out so fast that the shockwave could damage the bullet, perhaps even set it off.

It's also expensive as hell so don't use it with automatic weaponry.

 

the armor consists of 3 layers made of composite alloys the exact composition of which is both a highly guarded secret and will generally vary depending on when that component was manufactured, each layer consists of a solid plate made up of panels welded onto an internal support structure, the outermost layer is referred to as the thermal layer, the metal is largely malleable and likely to buckle or sometimes outright shatter in the event of a high speed impact but it protects the underlying layer from energy weapons with an extremely high melting point and limited conductivity of heat (there's a scientific term for how fast a material absorbs heat from it's environment but damn if I know it), the second layer is the ballistic layer, the metal is thick, and extremely hard, unless heated well past any ambient temperature it's completely stiff and will not bend without extreme kinetic force (such as from a bullet impact), it also reinforces the thermal layer by not allowing it room to bend or buckle inwards with incoming projectiles, and finally there is the insulator layer, the insulator layer oftentimes isn't even metal, it's just any material that will prevent external surges of electricity from being able to overload internal wiring systems

all of the alloys used typically come in 4 flavors: aircraft grade, infantry grade, vehicle grade, and starship grade, the higher the grade the more dense, heavy, and as a result stubbornly durable the material is.
Gladiators use exclusively aircraft grade, the lightest and most vulnerable grade of plating, aircraft grade plating isn't even a popular choice for aircraft plating because of it's low durability, it's only used in instances where conserving weight is more important than actual protection.
Crusaders and Legionnaires use infantry grade plating, with Legionnaires incorporating some vehicle grade plating into their torso for added protection
Lancers are exclusively vehicle grade, they are very heavy as a result, especially since the plating is thick to begin with, a thin sheet of vehicle grade plating still isn't wholly bulletproof
Vulcans and Thanatoses are also Vehicle grade, just even thicker, their plating thickness is easily on par with a tank

all references to the malleability and durability of materials assumes industrial or military grade forces such as heavy machinery and ballistic impacts

 

Mini-herp here I come

 

Intre that would be a tiny bullet.

very tiny.